Uh. And the pistol grip. Completely different stock. And well, just about everything that people normally talk about when differentiating an "assault weapon" from a regular old rifle.

And Joph? I'd be really cautious about posting a link of image files. As I'm sure you're aware, as someone who's used the internet for more than like 10 minutes, images are tagged incorrectly all the time. If you do a google image search for sks 7.62, you'll get a number that look scarily like an AK47. The problem is that they are actually images of AK47s. The ones that look like a normal rifle, with a normal stock and normal grip, and a much much shorter magazine? Those are the images of SKS rifles.

My point was that they managed to find a guy who was "absolutely positive" it was an AK47, when the reality is that anyone who could legitimately be "absolutely positive" about what kind of weapon they were looking at could never, under any circumstances, have confused the two weapons. Heck. The second I saw the first phone video where you could hear the gun shots it was obvious to me it wasn't an AK47 of any sort. First off, it certainly wasn't automatic (not that I expected that to be the case, but I was giving the guy the benefit of the doubt that he was mistaking a semi-auto knock off for the real thing), but it also sounded completely wrong.

This has not prevented many media outlets from describing it as an AK47 variant

The same media outlets you don't watch or read but extrapolate their reactions from the pattern of posts from the mostly liberal posters on this board?

Sigh... You manage to take deliberate ignorance to a whole new level.

With deliberate obfuscation like this I'm amazed Trump hasn't called you to his Cabinet yet.

____________________________

Jophiel wrote:

Last week, I saw a guy with an eyepatch and a gold monocle and pointed him out to Flea as one of the most awesome things I've seen, ever. If I had an eyepatch and a gold monocle, I'd always dress up as Mr. Peanut but with a hook hand and a parrot.

And Joph? I'd be really cautious about posting a link of image files. As I'm sure you're aware, as someone who's used the internet for more than like 10 minutes, images are tagged incorrectly all the time. If you do a google image search for sks 7.62, you'll get a number that look scarily like an AK47. The problem is that they are actually images of AK47s. The ones that look like a normal rifle, with a normal stock and normal grip, and a much much shorter magazine? Those are the images of SKS rifles.

Yeah, little tech tip for you. From the Google Image Search, there's a button you can press to actually go to the website and read about what's being shown. Like, say, this top line hit where I'm going to assume that the good people at First Stop Gun know what sort of gun they were selling. Or this one from Dark Wolf Defense that looks just like Pappy's Ole Varmint Rifle, let me tell ya. But thanks for taking the time to warn me away from looking at things for myself and instead putting full faith in the "long rifles means any rifle, all my friends down at the gun range told me so!" guy.

I'll use this double post to make the clarification that I'm not saying that the SKS looks exactly like an AK47, I'm laughing at the "It seriously looks like your grandfather's hunting rifle" description. While there are some SKS rifles that look quaintly traditional, many do not.

I guess it's a little amusing that you're trying to distract from your media contradiction by contradicting your stance on personal attacks. You know you wouldn't have these problems if you could just keep your stories straight.

Jophiel wrote:

But thanks for taking the time to warn me away from looking at things for myself and instead putting full faith in the "long rifles means any rifle, all my friends down at the gun range told me so!" guy.

He saw parts of Rambo once on SpikeTV so he's an expert on all firearms.

____________________________

George Carlin wrote:

I think it’s the duty of the comedian to find out where the line is drawn and cross it deliberately.

I'll use this double post to make the clarification that I'm not saying that the SKS looks exactly like an AK47, I'm laughing at the "It seriously looks like your grandfather's hunting rifle" description. While there are some SKS rifles that look quaintly traditional, many do not.

Any weapon can be modified cosmetically. Same deal here. But unless he spent the time and trouble to obtain one with such modifications (larger magazine is not as difficult, but pistol grip and folding stock are not likely to be sitting on the shelf at the local gun store), it's about 99% likely that the one he was using looked like the one in your first link and not your second. Again, I suppose if it had a larger magazine it's possible someone might maybe have confused it for the AK-47 (since they fire the same size round, and thus the modified magazine for the SKS would certainly have the same dimensions and shape as the one for an AK-47).

I can certainly find tons of images of Acuras with huge spoilers, low ground effects, led lighting, **** cans on the back, and a ton of other mods. But when someone says "he was driving an Acura", I tend to assume it's a normal stock Acura, and not one that's been modified, unless informed differently. So when I'm told by the officials that he used an SKS, and that he purchased it legally from a gun store in the area (which he'd only been in for a couple months), unless otherwise informed, I'm going to assume it was a stock SKS off the shelf, and not one of the ones you're pointing to.

Um... But that still misses the point I'm making. Most reasonable people, when asked, and when not actually positive what kind of weapon was used, would say that they don't know. The media who reported on this (MSNBC in this case) almost certainly had to go from person to person asking the question until they found the one useful idiot who would tell them he was "absolutely positive" it was an AK-47. Then they ran that clip on their news show (rather than probably 50 others who all either correctly identified the weapon, or properly stated that they did not know).

I mean, I get it. They want to report the news in the most dramatic fashion possible, so as to drum up business or something. But at the point where the pattern is so consistently that they get these details wrong, and they seem to deliberately seek out those wrong details so they can report them, and when those wrong details so consistently seem to align with their own not-so-secret anti-gun agenda, then yeah, it becomes beyond just bad reporting and intentionally misleading their audience.

The sad fact is that the wrong information that is reported in the first few hours of an event like this will be remembered for years, while the retractions and corrections will not. And frankly, the folks who do this know this is the case. They don't actually care about getting the facts right. They care about forming a perception that matches their agenda. And this is an easy way to do this. You and I both know that when the next inevitable round of proposed gun control regulations come along, said argument will use this shooting (among others) as support for getting "assault weapons" off the streets, and "let's reinstate the ban that was passed that the evil conservatives allowed to lapse". Even though you and I both know that the weapon certainly wasn't an "assault rifle", and that the term "assault weapon" is meaningless, and even though this weapon doesn't even meet the made up definition of "assault weapon", and was not included in the ban, it wont matter. Most of the people supporting the new proposal wont know this. They'll only remember all the incorrect labeling of this weapon as an "assault weapon", or an "AK47 variant", know that that makes it an assault weapon/rifle/whatever, and thus proclaim their outrage that such things are allowed on the street.

Worse, they'll use the fact that it was Republicans who were shot at as an argument for why conservatives should support such a ban. Cause "He shot your own guys! Don't you care about your own representatives? You should totally be supporting this ban, since it would have prevented that shooting." Yeah. Totally predictable. And sadly inevitable.

I guess it's a little amusing that you're trying to distract from your media contradiction by contradicting your stance on personal attacks. You know you wouldn't have these problems if you could just keep your stories straight.

First off: There is no media contradiction, only an interpretation of something I said years ago, one time, taken out of context. I have never once said I do not watch/read/listen to "media", or even to "news media". Ever. What I did say, and have clarified many times was "I don't get my news from anywhere", which was in the specific context of a conversation where Joph repeatedly called "opinion" "news". I made the mistake of using his term back at him. Since then, you and several others have for years now, quoted that statement completely out of context, to suggest that I was making the absurd claim that I've never watched nor ever will watch any news program of any kind. What I clearly meant was that I don't form my opinions by merely watching news programs and blindly accepting their opinions/spin/whatever as "fact". In the discussion in question, I was presenting my opinion along with an argument in support of it, and Joph kept saying "where are you getting your news from that you think that?". Which is what led to my statement in response. I was trying to say that I was not parroting something I'd heard on a news/opinion show, which was pretty clear in the context of the conversation itself.

When the interpretation of a statement is absurd, your first assumption should be that the interpretation is wrong and to seek clarification. But in this case, and despite me clarifying that statement many many times over the years, you keep going back to it. Like a dog that just can't let go of a bone. Geez man. Drop it.

Secondly: That's not a violation of my principle of avoiding personal attacks. I'm not labeling *you*. I'm talking about an action you are performing. In this case, you are engaged in "deliberate ignorance". I did not say you were ignorant. I did not say you were stupid. I did not, in fact, call you any names at all. I correctly labeled your behavior as "deliberate ignorance", because in this case, I know that I have directly informed you as to what I meant when I made that statement years ago, and have corrected you on multiple occasions when you've made this exact sort of dismissive claim that I somehow must be lying anytime I mention something I saw on the news because that contradicts the whole "I don't get my news from anywhere" statement.

You're pretending to not know something that you do actually know. Which is deliberate ignorance (or, I suppose feigning ignorance, but whatever). This is a behavior. It's a behavior you have engaged in many times. It's not a personal attack to observe that behavior and call you out on it.

Anything else you care to be wrong about? You're batting a thousand at this point.

ITT: Gbaji randomly guesses at what a gun might have looked like then throws a hissy fit that some media outlet didn't make the same random guess.

I especially like the "It's unlikely he bought one like that" when all of my links were to gun dealers (whoops, two dealers, one private seller) selling exactly that. Yeah, real unicorn that pistol group is.

ITT: Gbaji randomly guesses at what a gun might have looked like then throws a hissy fit that some media outlet didn't make the same random guess.

I especially like the "It's unlikely he bought one like that" when all of my links were to gun dealers (whoops, two dealers, one private seller) selling exactly that. Yeah, real unicorn that pistol group is.

Have you ever even been inside a gun store? I'm honestly curious. Pictures on the internet are not an accurate representation of reality. Just saying. I'm not at all saying that he could not have obtained an SKS with a pistol grip, folding stock, extended magazine, and some kind of fancy scope, but if he just walked into a gun store and purchased a few weapons in a relatively short amount of time (which is what it appears that he did, since every story I've read that mentions it says he purchased it at a local gun store and he was only in the area for a couple months), it's extremely unlikely that he purchased a rifle like that, and that the rifle would have been an SKS and not a number of other weapons which far more commonly possess those features.

Don't get me wrong. It's possible you could just walk into a gun store and they have an SKS modified with such things, that they happened to obtain in a private sale recently, and they don't yet have a buyer lined up, and you got lucky. Kinda like walking onto a car lot and happening to see a classic car with custom cams, glass pack, CAI, blower, and custom exhaust. It's possible. But not likely. Now, if you're looking for that kind of thing, you buy any of a number of more modern weapons that come with them. You don't buy an SKS.

That he purchased an SKS rather than something newer is almost certainly because he wanted a weapon with a larger round with more stopping power than the usual crop of cool looking weapons (with things like pistol grips and folding stocks), but pretty small and weak rounds. Let's not forget that he was buying this weapon intending to go out and shoot some people, right? Again, I suppose he might randomly have run into one with those cosmetic modifications, but it's unlikely.

Unless we see a photo somewhere of the actual weapon he used, there's no way to be sure. Again though, my primary point was about the media rushing to put the one guy who was "absolutely positive" that it was an AK-47 (a weapon it almost certainly was not), on their news broadcast. And, predictably, he was absolutely wrong. Whether it's possible to buy a variant of the weapon that was used that has some of the same features found on other weapons is really not the point. It's the point that anyone who is legitimately knowledgeable enough about firearms to actually be "absolutely positive" about the weapon used, would not, under any circumstances have made that statement about that weapon.

But the journalist in question obviously wasn't going to bother to determine if the person saying that had any actual knowledge of firearms to make such a determination. He just put the person on the broadcast because he was saying something the journalist wanted the public to believe was true. Which is really really terrible journalism.

Oh. And honestly, one of the things that has been bothering me. Your use of the words "some" and "many" from a few posts back is completely backwards. "Most" SKS rifles are going to look like the classic wood stock version. "Some" will have other features more commonly connected with a military style look. Again though, the relative appearance of such things in images on the internet are not an accurate indication of their relative commonality in the real world. I keep going back to car references, but it's a pretty accurate analogy. You don't put the picture of the economy car on your website. You put the sports car on there, right? But which car do you think the dealership sells the most of, and makes most of their money on?

ITT: Gbaji randomly guesses at what a gun might have looked like then throws a hissy fit that some media outlet didn't make the same random guess.

I especially like the "It's unlikely he bought one like that" when all of my links were to gun dealers (whoops, two dealers, one private seller) selling exactly that. Yeah, real unicorn that pistol group is.

Have you ever even been inside a gun store? I'm honestly curious. Pictures on the internet are not an accurate representation of reality. Just saying.

ITT: Gbaji rapidly flails from "They all called it an AK47 style weapon but it looks nothing like that!!!" to "Uh, But pictures on the internet are probably REALLY of AK47s" to "Those pictures of guns for sale by gun dealers are nothing like the guns that gun dealers sell!". To answer your question though, yes.

Quote:

Unless we see a photo somewhere of the actual weapon he used, there's no way to be sure.

Hilariously, the only one flipping out, losing their shit and writing multiple ten paragraph rants about it because they're just certain what the gun looked like (Pappy's Possum Plinker!) is you.

Sorry your conservative rage-blogs steered you wrong, man.

I admit that I only skimmed your conversation with Lolgaxe but I see you're whining about "News from anywhere" being taken out of context again. It's not, and you know it but here's the thread yet again for anyone interested. You were making real factual errors about the negotiations, not differences of opinion. I asked you where you were getting your news from that you kept getting basic factual things wrong and you famously responded.